| Home > South-East Asia >> Indonesia | |
Amnesty report offers grim view of Joko Widodo's death penalty record
The Guardian (Australia) - October 15, 2015
The report, entitled Flawed Justice, was released on Thursday and said half of all prisoners on death row interviewed by Amnesty claimed they had been beaten, tortured and coerced into "confessing" to their crimes.
The report includes claims from a Pakistani national on death row, Zulfiqar Ali, that police kicked, punched and threatened him with death for three days, only stopping when he confessed.
Ali's confession under duress was used as evidence against him, even though there was no independent investigation into his allegations. The beating was so severe he required kidney and stomach surgery.
All 14 executions in Indonesia over the past year were for drug-related crimes, the report said.
Amnesty revealed foreign death row prisoners were often denied an interpreter during or before trial, were made to sign documents in a language they did not understand, or were refused access to consular services, which are all breaches of international human rights laws.
In January, the Bali Nine drug smugglers Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan learned that they would face execution by firing squad, after their appeals for presidential clemency were rejected.
Lawyers for the pair criticised Widodo for rejecting their subsequent appeals, which contained new evidence about their rehabilitation, before those appeals had even been submitted, read or reviewed. The men were executed in April.
Since assuming office last October, Widodo has taken a hardline stance against drug-related crime, saying all clemency applications from death row prisoners on drug charges will be rejected.
It was a marked shift from his predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who did carefully consider clemency petitions and who introduced a de facto moratorium on the death penalty between 2008 and 2013.
Josef Benedict, Amnesty south-east Asia campaigns director, said while the death penalty was always a human rights violation, issues around how it was being applied, and haphazard legal processes in Indonesia, made it more tragic.
"Indonesia's callous U-turn on executions has already led to the death of 14 people, despite clear evidence of flagrant fair trial violations," Benedict said.
"President Joko Widodo has promised to improve human rights in Indonesia, but putting more than a dozen people before a firing squad shows how hollow these commitments are."
Greg Barton, a professor of Indonesian studies at Monash University in Victoria, said despite Widodo's views on drugs-related crime, it was still too early in his presidency to say this stance would prove immovable. "In Widodo we have actually do, by most measures, have a progressive and democratic president," Barton said.
"However he is also socially conservative in some respects, which has manifested itself in this seemingly unswerving commitment to the death penalty for drug crime.
"Once he settles into the role and feels more self assured, we may see more of his progressive elements influence his policy in this area. There are members of his inner circle who he trusts and listens to who are more progressive."
Widodo's policies around economic reform to help the poor, his disdain for pomp and ceremony, and his intolerance of corruption indicated he was someone who at times favoured a progressive and moral approach, Barton said.
"He went into office without a strong majority, and wanted to be seen as strong and as sticking to his convictions on drugs, and that is where we see his social conservatism at his worst. It's his greatest blind spot.
"He may though still be capable of realising that capital punishment is not the great panacea he thought it would be."
According to figures obtained from the Law and Human Rights Ministry, there were 121 people known to be on death row in Indonesia in April, including 54 people convicted of drug-related crimes, two convicted on terrorism charges and 65 convicted of murder.
There have been no executions in Indonesia since April, when Chan and Sukumaran were executed along with Nigerian men Okwuduli Oyatanze, Martin Anderson, Raheem Agbaje Salami and Silvester Obiekwe Nwolise; Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte; and Indonesian Zainal Abidin. Gularte had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
Australia withdrew its ambassador to Indonesia, Paul Grigson, in protest, and he resumed his position there in June.
Matthew Goldberg is the president of Reprieve Australia, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the international abolition of the death penalty.
He fought for Chan and Sukumaran as part of the Mercy campaign, and said Reprieve was continuing to support lawyers in Indonesia trying to keep their clients from execution.
"We believe that their dedication to a transparent and fair system of justice will prompt reform and the eventual abolition of the death penalty," he said.
See also:
 |